


these happy golden years

by fleurdelilies



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Something (?), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, JJ (Outer Banks) Deserves Better, JJ has a lot of feelings, Luke Maybank's A+ Parenting, Slow Build, Slow Burn, pre-Season One, teenage angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:27:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24644806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurdelilies/pseuds/fleurdelilies
Summary: Once he stops resisting, JJ realizes that becoming friends with Kiara is like swimming against a current—much easier when you surrender yourself to the push and pull of the water. And yes, of course they all have a thing for her—because Kiara is pretty and smart and awesome and obviously has the poor taste to slum it with JJ and his idiot friends.And JJ doesn’t really understand why that is, why Kiara chose them, but he really doesn’t want to mess this up.-a prologue to jj/kiara. pre-season one.
Relationships: JJ & John B. Routledge, JJ & Kiara & Pope & John B. Routledge, JJ & Kiara (Outer Banks), JJ & Pope (Outer Banks), JJ/Kiara (Outer Banks)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 188





	1. part i.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all, welcome to the ship that's been stuck in my brain, ever since my roommate and I made the mistake of binging season one of Outer Banks in two days. This was meant to be a one-shot to push me out of writer's block (lol), but it's pretty much spiralled out of control. At least part two is already written. Many thanks to my roommate for proof-reading this monster.

_“Of course, I’m hitting on her. She’s a super-hot, rich, hippie chick slumming with us. Why? I can't figure it out either. But who cares, bro? I know that door’s closed because I’ve tried it.”_

* * *

Some people mark the passing of time by years or birthdays. JJ counts by summers.

The summer before third grade, his mom dies. A pale, fair-haired wisp of a young woman, Caroline Maybank succumbs to her illness with frightening speed, fading into nothing right before JJ’s eyes. There’s a funeral. His polyester dress pants chafe uncomfortably in the heat, while somber-faced adults keep trying to hug and kiss him. They keep apologizing for his dead mom.

Luke Maybank is belligerently drunk before the dirt even hits the coffin. That’s the first night JJ learns to lock his door after bedtime.

When he returns to school, JJ is angry. Violently angry.

He starts picking fights on the blacktop, recklessly tussling with boys twice his height and width. It doesn’t matter who or what or why, JJ doesn’t need much motivation to throw a punch. Before long, deep-purple bruises bloom along his thin jawline and scrawny torso, blending seamlessly with the ones left by older and rougher hands.

On a dark, drizzly day in March, he picks a fight with the wrong person—or maybe the right one, depending on your perspective. Even at eight-years-old, John B has a freckled tan, a headful of burnt-caramel waves, and a strangely magnetic personality. Neither of them remembers exactly how it started, but soon they’re both scuffling furiously on the playground, with a crowd of bloodthirsty children cheering them on. Once the gym teacher hauls them apart, both of them sullen, fuming, and sore, an overhead announcement gives the instructions for an early dismissal due to tornado warning.

Waiting along with the rest of their third-grade class, JJ quietly observes as nervous-looking parents file past and retrieve their kids. Outside, a foreboding wind rattles the windowpanes and screen doors. By the time their teacher checks her watch anxiously, only he and John B remain, both of them hastily patched up by the school nurse. To the teacher’s consternation, minutes tick by and Luke Maybank is nowhere to be contacted.

JJ refuses to meet their teacher’s gaze, her eyes full of the same kind of pity he’s been receiving for months now. He can hear them whispering about him and his dad, and he knows this other kid can hear them too.

When Big John arrives, John B takes one look at JJ and refuses to leave him behind. Although the teacher doesn’t want to release JJ into their care, John B’s infamous bullheadedness is a hereditary trait, and Big John cajoles her into agreeing.

“Luke Maybank’s son, eh?” Despite the inscrutable look in his dark eyes, Big John smiles behind his bushy brown beard. “C’mon then.”

It’s not as if John B’s place is much different than his own.

Both of them live on the wrong side of town, in the kind of weather-beaten wooden houses that routinely survive hurricanes despite all odds. JJ’s new friend doesn’t have a mother either—yet John B’s mom is very much alive, just no longer in the picture. JJ doesn’t know if that’s better or worse.

The best part about John B’s place is the freedom. While Big John might be an eccentric flake, his _laissez-faire_ approach to parenting means the boys roam wild during afternoons, accumulating dozens of scraped limbs and sun-peeled noses as a result of poorly-concocted adventures.

Most importantly, Big John never asks questions. Not even on the mornings he finds JJ sleeping on the hammock outside, only silently leaves a spare key hidden in the porch and a first-aid kit on the kitchen counter.

Pope joins them the following year, when their fourth-grade math class is divided by aptitude _(nerds,_ thinks JJ, who is left behind with the other unimpressive stupid kids). When John B returns from fraternizing with the high-achievers, he brings back a gangly, awkward dark-skinned boy. At first JJ doesn’t really understand why they need this other person, this interloper who only talks about his dead bug collection and always backs down whenever the games on the blacktop get too rough.

But John B thinks he’s cool, and whatever John B says usually goes, so JJ doesn’t really fight it. After a few weeks having him around, JJ begins to get accustomed to Pope’s absentminded rambling, fervent geekiness, and occasional snark. At some point, JJ starts including the other boy in their plans, using that big brain of his to their advantage, even if Pope looks discomfited by their blatant rule-breaking. But Pope never snitches.

The next summer, when he and John B find some older Kook boys using Pope as their new personal punching bag, JJ is the first one to throw a fist in his defense.

When three limping and bloodied eight-year-olds shuffle inside Heyward’s Seafood shop asking for ice packs, Pope’s dad is quietly furious. But JJ catches sight of Pope’s pleased and grateful expression. He grins widely in response, despite how his split lip stings.

“No Pogue left behind, right?” JJ whispers at him behind Heyward’s back.

And just like that, Pope becomes one of JJ’s people.

For a few summers, it’s just the three of them. They spend their childhood racing bikes through the streets of the Cut at break-neck speed, always finding and barely escaping trouble. Those are the happiest moments of JJ’s life, abusive dad notwithstanding. It’s sunshine-filled days out on the shimmering blue waters of the Atlantic, the kind of days that encourage JJ to stay out of his house and away from Luke Maybank’s volatile temper.

And then along comes Kiara.

From the moment she walks into Kildare County Middle School, Kiara stands out like a sore thumb. It’s obvious that she’s not quite one of them. Her clothes are too nice, her green backpack and reusable water bottle are brand-new, and she lacks the chip on her shoulder that everyone in the Cut has. But on that first day of seventh grade, the new girl marches in with her shoulders squared and her chin tilted up in defiance, a confidence belied by the nervousness in her warm brown eyes. Other girls whisper and titter amongst themselves. JJ wonders what a wannabe Kook is doing there, rather than attend their fancy mainland prep school.

One thing you should know: if Big John is a treasure hunter, then John B is a collector.

Rather than go after legendary pots of gold, John B finds people—a little bit hardened around the edges, with a few signs of wear and tear, and always with something to prove **.** Even though JJ would like to believe that they found their way to each other, he knows as John B’s best friend that this is never the case. Once you’ve been drawn into John B’s orbit, once he’s chosen you, there’s no denying the gravitational pull. So, when John B chooses to make a beeline for Kiara’s table during lunch period, JJ resigns himself to the possibility that the new girl isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Despite being perfectly aware that Kiara has never done anything to him, JJ still can’t stand her. It’s petty, he knows, and completely irrational, but JJ isn’t very well known for being rational.

When John B begins inviting her to their after-school hangouts, Kiara tries so hard to ingratiate herself with their group. She arrives at the Chateau bearing reusable bagfuls of snacks (the nice, brand-name kind) and Kook things like board-games, easily slipping into playful banter with John B and Pope. Soon, Kiara needs no explicit invitation—most afternoons, her fancy bike is either parked outside John B’s place or she’s riding alongside the boys down the potholed streets of the Cut.

She puts him on edge.

Both John B and Pope, they’re from the Cut. They don’t question when JJ disappears every so often, when he comes into school with a sore side or a cigarette burn on his arm. They don’t stare when he wears the same clothes three days in a row, when he sneaks showers at John B’s place because his dad forgot to pay the water bill. They understand when not to push. Kiara doesn’t.

She asks questions. She wants to _know them._

John B and Pope don’t care, they don’t have anything to hide. Nothing dark and ugly awaits them at home, only the usual crappy problems people come to expect from the Cut. In fact, JJ suspects they enjoy having Kiara around for just that: to talk about the things the guys only rarely discuss amongst themselves.

JJ doesn’t want her around, doesn’t need to talk.

The tension between them doesn’t exactly go unnoticed by the others. Whenever Kiara is around, JJ keeps his guard up—the nicer and softer she is towards him, the sharper and meaner his replies become. The problem is he underestimates Kiara, who JJ learns can be insufferably stubborn when prompted. So, she double-downs on her friendly overtures, eager to prove she can be trusted. For every scrape their group gets into, Kiara is there. She’s there as a look-out for security guards, as a decoy for unsuspecting tourists, or sometimes as a ringleader in her own right.

But JJ isn’t fooled.

He sees her obsession with charity cases, he sees the heart-shaped patch proclaiming ‘Human Rights’ stitched to her backpack. The Pogues are her polar bears on the melting ice cap, her latest bleeding-heart cause. At some point, she’ll get bored and move on.

Whenever that happens, JJ doesn’t plan on being disappointed by a rich girl who was only slumming it.

During winter break, John B confronts him: “Give it a rest, bro. Can’t you just accept that she likes us? Kiara’s not going anywhere, man.”

It’s two days before Christmas and John B’s cornered him in the kitchen of the Chateau. Outside, Pope and Kiara are assembling a makeshift fire-pit for them to sit around, and JJ’s pretty sure Pope’s brought a measuring tape for calculating the perfect radius to avoid stray embers. The remaining Pogues are inside on hot cocoa duty, the only recipe Caroline Maybank taught JJ how to make before her death, and they seriously debate spiking it with a shot of whiskey. But Big John keeps his liquor cabinet locked, and JJ’s already learned breaking into his dad’s stash is not worth the beating.

JJ shrugs off the accusatory comment, “What’re you talking about? Dude, I’m nothing but nice to her.”

“Knock it off, alright,” John B looks at him meaningfully. “Kiara’s cool. She doesn’t deserve you icing her out, man. She keeps asking me why you don’t like her and I don’t know what to tell her anymore. What’s your problem?”

“Nothing! I never said nothing bad about her.”

John B frowns at him, unconvinced.

The kitchen window gives JJ a view of Kiara, wrapped snug in her Greenpeace hoodie and John B’s old parka, sitting by and patiently watching Pope circle the small flame they’ve built. He is uncomfortably aware of the tiny pile of presents she’s brought, sitting pretty and shiny atop the coffee table, a flat package with his name on a tag. Whenever she does things like this—things that remind JJ that Kiara can be generous without hesitation—something under his skin itches.

“Alright, dude,” JJ says, because he doesn’t really know how to say no to John B. “I’ll play nice.”

He doesn’t, not really.

Sure, on the surface it might seem like she’s a fully accepted Pogue.

After that conversation, JJ makes a point of being magnanimously genteel with Kiara, who he exclusively refers to as ‘Your Highness.’ It’s funny at first, and neither John B nor Pope seem to pick up on the malicious undertone, but Kiara watches him with a dark look in her eyes. She smiles with a clenched jaw and laughs when John B playfully bows in deference, but JJ knows that she won’t go running to him again.

Nobody, especially not a Kook chick, gets between him and John B.

This peculiar state of affairs—where he and Kiara spar by being overly nice to each other, with zero genuine affection—continues right up until their next break, when chilly winter gives way to the first stirrings of warm spring. They’re trekking through an abandoned property after sunset, a foreclosed McMansions along the coastline. Although the banks usually auction the valuables in these houses after evicting their residents, Luke Maybank has taught his son that sometimes treasures were overlooked.

“I don’t like this,” whispers Pope nervously, knowing they’re further into Figure Eight territory than any of them would prefer. “Guys, what if the cops come?”

“They’re only going to come if they hear you yapping,” dismisses JJ, who’s pushing fallen branches from overgrown trees out of their path.

“Guys, _shut up,”_ hisses John B over his shoulder.

The weak beam emitted by Pope’s keychain flashlight trembles at the sound of a car winding down the road, and JJ hears Kiara telling him to (wo)man up. The large house lays dark and silent to their left, the kind of spacious family home JJ imagines Kiara lives in, but the true prize is up ahead. The garden shed. Lucky for them, JJ has a particular knack for picking locks. Inside, they find stacks full of gardening equipment, old paints and brushes, and even an untouched bag of coal briquettes.

While Pope geeks out over some fancy toolbox and John B digs through a pile of plywood, JJ unearths the real find of the night: a bike. The red paint is peeling, and the chain has clearly been repaired before, but it’s definitely functional.

JJ no longer has a bike, not since last summer. There was an incident—involving a pick-up truck, a fence, and JJ’s shit-faced dad—that left JJ hitching rides on the back of John B’s bicycle.

“Are you going to take it?” a voice asks behind him. Using her smartphone as a flashlight, Kiara illuminates where JJ’s standing. “Isn’t that stealing?”

“I’m sorry, do you see anyone using it?” he retorts, smarting at being unfairly judged.

Kiara frowns. “No, but the people who owned it shouldn’t have been kicked out. It isn’t fair.”

“Life isn’t fair, Your Highness,” replies JJ sharply. “Anyways, who’s gonna come back for a shitty bike?”

“Do you _have_ to steal it?” she insists. “Why can’t you just ask your dad for one?”

The mention of Luke Maybank brings a halt to the whispered conversation in the shed, and even Kiara seems to realize she’s crossed a line. By now, she’s learned to avoid subjects like money or parents around the Pogues. The shitty details of their home lives are kind of sacred, acknowledged but unspoken. Occasionally, however, Kiara slips up with the thoughtlessness of someone who’s been beloved and comfortably cared for her entire life.

 _She’s just a Kook_ , thinks JJ bitterly, w _ho cares about her opinion?_ Wrapping calloused fingers around the handlebars, he ignores her comment and roughly hauls the bike up.

“JJ, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”

And the worst part is that JJ can tell she’s actually sorry.

Regret shines bright in her dark eyes, open and undisguised, and she appears visibly discomfited by her mistake. Behind her, Pope and John B regard the pair with wary expressions.

But he’s fucking _done_ with this princess playing at pauper. And the anger inside JJ, the one smoldering constantly in his chest and kept alive and healthy by his father, flares with a searing heat that burns inside his ribcage.

“No, forgive _me_ ,” he replies, words dripping with condescension. “But I thought you _wanted_ to be a Pogue. I thought you _wanted_ to go slumming with the have-nots and get a taste of what it’s like to be working-class. So, get off your goddamned high horse, Your Highness, because we don’t get things handed to us on a silver platter. Sometimes you just have to take it.”

Although Pope and John B are shooting him _‘what the hell, man?’_ looks, JJ is feeling a kind of queer, dangerous sensation. It’s like when he was a kid, playing among the wreckage of telephone wires after a hurricane. The tears pricking at the corners of Kiara’s eyes tell JJ that he’s done enough damage already, but whenever he starts running his big fat mouth, he always finds it hard to stop.

“What is it, Kiara? Didn’t you want to be a Pogue?” JJ can tell his words are aiming true from the way she tightens her jaw. "Or are you finally done pretending to be one of us? Why don’t you just run along to your mommy and daddy, huh? Go tell them a dirty, rude boy from the Cut hurt your feelings. Isn’t that why you’re here? To piss them off?”

And Kiara, who’s spent months treating him like those baby sea turtles she gently coaxes into the ocean, finally snaps.

“What the fuck is your problem?” she snarls in JJ’s face. “I said sorry, okay? Look, I don’t know what your problem is—or who hurt you to make you like this—but I’m _done_ trying to be friends with you. You act like I’m a prejudiced brat because of my family, but you actually hate me and you haven’t even bothered to get to know me. You know what, JJ? You’re such a hypocrite.”

JJ sputters, “Excuse me, _I’m_ the hypocrite?”

“Yes, you dumbass!” Throwing her hands up in the air, Kiara pivots on her heel and storms out of the shed, slamming the doors behind her.

Stunned by her departure, Pope and John B turn to stare at him. Flushing uncomfortably under their incredulous gazes, JJ demands, “What? She started it, man.”

“She doesn't know your dad’s an asshole, dude,” points out Pope, who always unflinchingly tells the truth. “You didn’t have to rail into her like that.”

Worse still, John B looks disappointed. “You gotta apologize, bro. That was cold.”

Fuck.

It’s not as if JJ doesn’t know he could be unfairly cruel. His quicksilver tongue is his only talent, the only gift his father ever gave him (other than the gift of life and, personally, JJ isn’t all too enthusiastic about that either). When wielded against playground bullies and abusive authoritative figures, it can be a blessing and a curse. When used against his friends, it’s mostly a self-destructive impulse that blows up in his face. Case in point.

After helping JJ extract the old bike from the shed, the boys are unsurprised to discover Kiara’s bicycle is gone from the fence where they’d left the others. Riding back to the Cut, John B branches off and heads into the borderland—a patch of middle-class suburban houses where he informs them Kiara lives. Having dropped off Pope at Heyward’s shop, JJ heads straight for his own house, which is as eerily quiet as the empty property he’d just looted.

That night, JJ tosses and turns in bed, and not just because his dad’s poker buddies roll up at midnight and he can’t risk sneaking downstairs for a stale bag of chips.

_‘Look, I don’t know what your problem is—or who hurt you to make you like this—but I’m done trying to be friends with you.’_

_‘—or who hurt you to make you like this—’_

He’d thought he was doing the right thing. Protecting his people, protecting himself from an outsider.

Early on in life, JJ was taught that trust is a perilous and precious thing. Rarely granted, easily revoked. Most of the world, it seemed, had conspired to prove him right, beginning with his old man. And JJ became so focused on preventing himself from getting hurt, that he quickly stopped caring about who he hurt in the process.

Maybe the world _was_ fucked up. Maybe everyone _was_ out to get him. But wasn’t it wrong to shut out someone who’d been determined to befriend him, someone who hadn’t really done anything wrong to begin with? Someone who continually proved they were trustworthy?

It wasn’t as if he dislikes Kiara, not as a person at least.

Sure, she’s weirdly passionate about things that JJ didn’t give two shits about, but weren’t they all? Pope has his dead bug stuff, and neither John B nor JJ care. And Kiara is smart, isn’t she? And her laugh is kind of cute, especially when she scrunches her nose up and snorts really loudly. And even if she and JJ don’t have anything else in common, at least they’d been the two people to convince Big John to keep the rooster.

Maybe, if JJ hadn’t been so determined to keep her at arm’s length, he would have noticed all of this sooner.

Acute shame roils in his stomach at the memory of Kiara’s tears.

Of the little JJ remembers of his mother, he knows that Caroline Maybank cried often. He wasn’t meant to see it, JJ thinks, but he recalls her damp kisses in his hair and the shining wetness on her cheeks. His dad used to drink back then, too, but JJ’s mom would shield him from the worst by playing hide and seek with her son. Closet doors can muffle even the loudest of drunken rages.

Is that the kind of guy JJ is becoming? His dad?

The thought keeps him awake the entire night.

The next afternoon, Kiara isn’t at the Chateau. She isn’t at the beach, nor has Heyward seen her when they stop by his shop and ask. When Pope receives a text informing them she’ll be working shifts at her family’s restaurant for the rest of the week, the other two boys frown at JJ. He’d text her himself, but he doesn’t have a cellphone yet—JJ’s been working odd jobs all year to save up enough to buy a refurbished one.

Sun dipping below the western horizon, JJ waits penitently outside of The Wreck, watching the sky above the ocean fade pinkish-purple. For two nights in a row, Kiara resolutely ignores him, marching past with her head held high and not even glancing in his direction. The third evening, JJ’s body is stiff from spending hours sitting on the curbside and he seriously considers doing something very reckless, like marching inside and annoying Kiara until she speaks to him. At the very least, JJ knows he can’t leave without apologizing, even if she doesn’t want to be friends anymore.

Stomach panging at the scent of freshly-fried fish and chips wafting from the front door, JJ tries to think about anything other than food. If John B was still talking to him, he could maybe swing by the Chateau and swipe something from their fridge—Big John would never begrudge JJ a sandwich.

“Hello there,” says a soft voice from above, and JJ looks up.

A snowy-haired woman stands on the sidewalk before him, the kind of Kook lady that wears floral print dresses and a string of pearls looped around her neck. JJ wonders if he could play the sympathy card for some leftovers, but there’s a steely glint to her dark eyes that indicate she’s not one to be tricked or trifled with.

“Are you the young man who’s been waiting for my granddaughter?” she asks seriously.

Flashing his most charming grin and widening his blue eyes, JJ answers, “Maybe. It depends on who’s your granddaughter.”

Amused, the elderly woman remarks, “Kiara said you were infuriating. I can see why.”

JJ’s smile falters.

“Nothing to worry about; a good, honest apology can sort out even the worst of troubles,” she chuckles. Peering closer at him, she startles JJ by asking, “Are you Caroline’s boy?”

No one in JJ’s life has ever referred to him as Caroline Maybank’s son. It’s implied in his parentage, of course, but Luke Maybank’s shadow looms too far and large for anyone to identify JJ by his mother. The sound of her name, long forbidden in his household, feels oddly taboo to be spoken so freely by a stranger.

“Yes, ma'am,” JJ responds, feeling younger than he has in years.

“Such a sweet, pretty little thing, Caroline was. She used to work here, you know,” the lady informs him. “The tourists loved her—your mom would get more tips than any of the other girls. That was before you were born, long before your father started sniffing around here. Such a shame she died.”

If JJ feels young and vulnerable, Kiara’s grandmother seems to age with sadness, wrinkles creasing the corners of her eyes. “I’m sure you’re tired of hearing this, but you look just like her,” she remarks. “Now, wait here a minute and I’ll send my Kiara out with some food. You look like a growing boy.”

Although before he’d been determined to out-stubborn Kiara and apologize, JJ isn’t sure he wants to see her anymore. Or see anybody else, for that matter. This kindly grandmother has reopened an old wound, the one that aches like his pinky finger, which was never set properly after his dad slammed a phone book on it, and JJ feels distinctly unsteady. Shaken. Vulnerable.

“Oh no, I’ll just come back later—” he says, voice somewhat strangled.

“No please, sit down and don’t go anywhere, it’ll be just a second!”

Though the promise of a meal is tempting, JJ takes the opportunity to bolt when she heads back inside the restaurant, scrambling to hop on his bike and pedal out of there as fast as possible. But either the old lady is quicker than she looks, or Kiara has some kind of sixth sense, because JJ is stopped by a curly-haired girl who blocks his path and demands, “Where are you going?”

“I was just about to leave,” JJ retorts sharply, but his voice catches at the end and he swallows a sob he didn’t even realize was there.

Kiara looks disconcerted.

For a second, it’s as if the fight didn’t happen, her expression full of gentle concern. But the moment passes and the memory of their argument kicks in, leaving her scowling in his face.

“Why did you come here then? Why are you waiting outside our door like a kicked puppy?” she questions angrily.

Looking down at his hands on the handlebars, JJ knows he can’t leave without what he came for. Struggling to come up with the words he’d come expressly to say, he mumbles, “‘m sorry,” the apology sticking to his throat.

“What?”

“I’m sorry, okay?” he repeats forcefully.

She pauses, clearly surprised.

“Is that supposed to fix everything?” retorts Kiara after a beat, hands on her hips. “Are you just here because John B told you to be?”

Heat rushes to JJ’s thin cheeks. “No, of course not. I’m his friend, not his lackey.”

Kiara frowns, unconvinced.

“Look, I was an asshole, okay, I know that,” he rushes out, thinking it better to let the apology surge up like a wave. “You’re right, I judged you before really knowing you, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m a hypocrite. But I didn’t know who you were, only that you’re not like us, and people who look like you don’t really hang out with people who look like us—”

“People who look like me?” squawks Kiara indignantly, but JJ ignores this because he can’t seem to stop talking.

“And they’re not really nice people either. But I didn’t give you a fair chance, and I just kind of assumed you’d be as awful as the rest of them, and now I know it was wrong to do that,” JJ finishes, heart racing in his chest, before tacking on another, “And I’m sorry,” in case he’d somehow forgotten to throw that in there.

Arms crossed, Kiara still appears conflicted, “So?”

“So, what?” replies JJ, thinking he hadn’t really planned further than this point.

“So, what are you going to do about it? Am I just supposed to think everything is better now because you've found yourself a conscience?”

Now, JJ’s the one frowning, “What is that supposed to mean?”

Kiara huffs. “I mean that if I accept your apology, what’re you gonna do about it? How are things going to be better?”

It’s a fair question. JJ has already promised to be nicer to Kiara, only to turn that promise into an opportunity to further alienate her. His track record is problematic at best.

JJ thinks before answering, “Look, I can try this time, for real. Give it a fair chance.”

“You mean try being friends?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

He nods shortly.

“What if I don’t want to be friends anymore?”

Stomach flipping, JJ tightens his grip on the handlebars. It’s not as if he hasn’t considered this possibility. In all honesty, he’d gone to The Wreck believing it would be the likeliest outcome.

“That’s cool too,” JJ shrugs and looks down, blonde bangs falling into his eyes. “To be honest, I’m not very popular right now. But, between you and me, I think I kind of deserve it.”

A hard shove nearly unseats him from his bike.

“Stop that pity party, you’re apologizing to me, remember?” Kiara says, a slight smirk pulling at her full lips. “So, how about this? You give me a fair chance, I give _you_ a fair chance, and maybe—just maybe—we can be friends.”

Sticking out her hand for him to shake, JJ stares at Kiara in disbelief.

Just like that? It was that easy? Enclosing her smaller hand in his, JJ is surprised to discover that Kiara’s fingers have callouses too. She might be Kook, but Kiara is no stranger to hard work.

“Oh, and one more thing…” A grin lights up Kiara’s face, with all the satisfaction of a cat who’s caught the canary. “This summer I want surfing lessons.”

The world might have taught JJ grim ideas about trust, but Kiara is the first person to teach him about forgiveness. A strange sensation blossoms in JJ’s chest, warm and golden like a sunrise over Pamlico Sound, and relieved laughter bubbles in his throat. A flash of guilt courses through him at her startled expression, but Kiara soon relaxes and grins in response.

They’re not quite best friends yet, but JJ can’t help but think she has one of the nicest smiles he’s ever seen.

* * *

Once he stops resisting, JJ realizes that becoming friends with Kiara is like swimming against a current—much easier when you surrender yourself to the push and pull of the water.

The summer before eighth grade slips by in a haze of azure skies and sticky seawater, sand in their hair and clothes, and a blistering sun searing their skin. Out on the ocean, Kiara proves to be a quick learner and the boys whoop their approval when she successfully rides her first wave. When they aren’t lounging on the shore of Rixon’s Cove, they’re fishing in the marsh on the Routledges’ boat and grilling freshwater drum in the evening. The Pogues fall asleep beneath the fireflies, huddled together atop a hammock that groans under their combined weight.

When classes start up again, they return for their final year of middle school sporting deep tans and colorful, woven bracelets on their wrists.

JJ was the first to receive a bracelet, sometime in mid-July, when Kiara decided to cement their newfound friendship with a visible gesture. The other Pogues snickered at the ‘girly’ accessory, but JJ is disproportionately pleased and beams with something akin to pride, especially when Kiara pressed a fleeting, friendly kiss to his cheek.

Pope and John B then eagerly requested their own friendship bracelets, to which Kiara agreed on the condition they accompany her to watch the baby sea turtles hatch at dawn.

Eighth grade is a good year.

Luke Maybank gets himself a job on the mainland that means he’s rarely at home, but it pays regularly enough that he leaves two twenties on the kitchen counter every week. When JJ isn’t working deliveries at Heyward’s or finishing up last-minute homework, the Pogues are off doing whatever they want, so long as doesn’t land them in county jail. Most nights JJ crashes on the worn leather couch at the Chateau, watching old DVDs of National Geographic documentaries with John B and his dad.

That Christmas, Kiara’s grandmother dies.

They’re not invited to the funeral, but instead, the boys patiently wait outside The Wreck and watch mourners trickle inside for the wake. The mild storm season has translated into a nippy, wet winter and JJ is uncomfortably aware he’s outgrown his jacket. Still, they refuse to move from the curbside until a girl in a black dress slips through the front entrance, steaming carton to-go cups in her hands.

“Hi,” Kiara says quietly, the skin around her eyes puffy and red, tears clumping her eyelashes into triangles. “Here, I brought y’all this.”

Uncertain what to do or say, the boys each grab a cup of their own. The scent of hot chocolate wafts through the hole in the lid, the heat warming JJ’s fingertips.

Gripped by the memory of last Christmas, when things were tense and awful and Kiara still brought him a present as if he deserved it, JJ is the first to move. He’s never really done this before—in his experience, physical affection is the sort of thing that hurts and leaves you sore for days. But JJ awkwardly reaches out to gently wrap a lean arm around Kiara’s shoulder, murmuring, “This sucks, Kie,” into her ear.

It’s enough for the dam to break.

Great big sobs burst forth from her chest, but Kiara tries to hide her scrunched up, crying face behind her hands. At JJ’s alarmed expression, the other two boys surge forward and wrap their arms around their friends, huddling together like penguins on an iceberg. They stay like that for a few minutes, at least until it sounds like Kiara can breathe again.

Hastily wiping away tears, Kie inhales and exhales deeply. “Thanks guys,” she says, a mirthless quirk to her lips, “This really does suck.”

With time, Kiara’s sadness passes. Her smile returns hesitantly, like sunshine peeking through the clouds, and a weight is lifted from JJ’s shoulders at the sight. Now, he doesn’t shy away from the easy affection Kiara bestows upon them, letting her burrow her comforting warmth into his side. After that, he eagerly reciprocates with the other Pogues, wrapping an arm around John B or smacking a kiss against Pope’s temple. The boys and Kiara take it into stride, and JJ refuses to wince if a hug squeezes the occasional bruised rib.

The four Pogues have become even more inseparable than before, travelling like a small pack of wolves around the Cut and the borderlands.

During spring break, Big John skips town for the week, following the trail of his mysterious shipwreck, and leaves a pile of frozen pizzas and TV dinners in his absence.

“C’mon, let’s do this,” says John B, and JJ lets himself be dragged into Big John’s office, which is usually very much out of bounds.

However, picking the lock is a breeze for JJ, as is breaking into the locked drawer in Big John’s desk. The small, wood-paneled room is piled high with papers and maps and photographs—an entire lifetime’s worth of obsessive research. But John B and JJ are single-minded in their endeavor, with their eye on a much more interesting loot.

“That’s disgusting,” John B gags after throwing back a shot of cheap vodka.

JJ relishes the burning feeling in his throat, tears stinging at his eyes.

When they emerge from Big John’s brandishing a bottle of Tito’s finest, Pope outright refuses to participate, staying only after his friends assure him that he wouldn’t have to drink. Conversely, Kiara is intrigued, snickering when JJ nearly coughs up a lung after the first shot.

“Dickheads,” she declares, swiping the vodka bottle from John B before he could pour them another round. “Here, let me.”

Disappearing into the kitchen, they can hear the sounds of Kiara rummaging in the fridge, the hollow sound of plastic cups, and the crunch of ice. She returns with four souvenir glasses, full of a fruity-looking mixture that smells vaguely like disinfectant. To JJ’s surprise, it tastes semi-decent—enough to down a third of the cup in one gulp.

“Sometimes, when my parents aren’t on duty, the bartenders let me help out,” Kiara reveals with a little self-assured grin, “Pope stop it, there’s nothing in yours, it’s just Kool-Aid and orange juice. Guys, we gotta make a toast!”

“Carpe diem?” suggests Pope, hesitantly sniffing his drink.

“Seize the fucking day!” agrees John B readily, raising his cup so abruptly that it sprays them all with sticky pink liquid.

Kiara loudly protests and shoves him, accidentally jostling Pope’s drink, and the impromptu toast turns into a minor squabble of knees and elbows. Over the argument, JJ hollers: “Pogues! May we live long and prosper!”

The mixed alcohol feels and tastes much nicer than the few beers he’s managed to swipe from his dad’s stash.

JJ wonders if this is why Luke Maybank struggles to stay sober for longer than a week. There’s a fizzy sensation under his skin and JJ’s floating, aimlessly drifting over the swell of the ocean tide. The world seems brighter and softer somehow, its sharp edges dulled and cushioned by the vodka. The sound of Kiara giggling uncontrollably, eyes bright and cheeks flushed, makes him feel like he’s fucking flying.

_“Shh!”_

_“Stop shushing me, you’ll wake him up.”_

_“He’s not waking up anytime soon.”_

Out of the three drinkers, John B turns out to be the lightweight. The brunette is tipsy by their first cup and completely sloshed by their third, needing Pope to hold him upright while he empties his stomach into the toilet bowl. Their responsible friend shoots them reproachful looks, but Kiara and JJ are well past the point of ridiculous drunk and nearly overturn the TV in their attempt to help.

Leaving to attend to John B, who’s retching loudly in the bathroom, Pope instructs them to, “Please, sit down and— _no, JJ, stop that_ —guys, stop drinking.”

Obviously, JJ has never been one to listen to instructions and won’t start now. He immediately grabs the cup John B abandoned in his uncoordinated dash for the bathroom, swigging back the last dredges of its contents. There’s half a bottle of vodka left, but they’re out of mixer.

“Did you finish that?” complains Kiara, reaching for the now-empty cup. “That wasn’t fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” grins JJ, sinking back into the brown leather sofa, closing his eyes and letting his head tilt back. The couch shifts under his body as Kiara leans against him, head coming to rest on his shoulder.

“Yeah, you told me that once,” she reminds him, as if he could ever forget the sequence of unfortunate events that led to their friendship. With Kie now cuddled by his side, last spring break seems to have happened in another life.

“Yeah, I remember,” he exhales. “I was kind of a douche.”

“You were right, though,” she counters, and JJ opens his eyes to find Kiara looking up at him intensely. “Like, yeah, you were a douche about it, but you weren’t wrong. There’s plenty of things in life that aren’t fair... I get that now.”

There’s something burning in the darkness of her eyes, that same determined fire he sees whenever she talks about the environment or whenever she destroys an opponent on the debate team. It makes something inside his ribcage twist hard, JJ’s mouth going dry.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t change things,” Kiara continues, her words very deliberate, as if she repeats them often to herself. “We can make things better.”

Right now, JJ isn’t exactly sure what they’re talking about. Her face is a hair’s breadth away from his, so much so that he can feel the warmth of her breath on his lips, and the air between them feels weirdly electric. Blood is rushing to JJ’s face and, for all he’s talked about girls with John B and Pope, he doesn’t have a clue how to proceed.

It’s not as if he hasn’t kissed a girl before. That happened last summer, when a Touron chick with sunset-colored hair had flirted with JJ for a week before pressing her lips against his. It tasted like cherry chapstick. The boys had snickered and congratulated him, while Kiara had rolled her eyes and grinned ruefully in the background.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? This is _Kiara._

There’s a blue-and-white friendship bracelet wrapped around his wrist, like he’s a character in the fucking Babysitter’s Club, that _she_ gifted him. There’s her number in his phone, which she put down as an emergency contact in case his stupid ass ever got arrested. There’s her bright smile, her bossy demeanor, and her relentless teasing, and the fact that _yes, of course_ they all have a thing for her—because Kiara is pretty and smart and awesome and obviously has the poor taste to slum it with JJ and his idiot friends.

And JJ doesn’t really understand why that is—why Kiara chose to let them sit with her at lunch instead of joining the popular girls—but he really doesn’t want to fuck this up.

So instead of leaning forward and finding out whether Kiara’s mouth tastes like Kool-Aid and cheap vodka, JJ moves away and seizes the moment when John B hoarsely shouts, “Dude!” from the bathroom.

“C’mon,” he says, extending a hand to help her up from the sagging couch. “I think we need to sober him up with a cold shower.”

They tuck a dripping-wet John B into bed in the early hours of dawn, the rest of the Pogues tip-toeing out of his room (not without taking a few pictures of the penis JJ sharpies onto his face). The boys think this is the height of comedy, but Kiara sighs exasperatedly and writes _‘I’m a lightweight’_ on his forehead. JJ tries not to notice whether her fingers linger when brushing away John B’s curls.

Shuffling out to the living room, JJ can see through the windows that powder-blue light lingers at the furthest edges of the horizon. Pope gratefully flops onto the recliner, narrows his eyes at JJ and Kiara and says, “Don’t you dare wake me up before noon.” Pulling his hoodie low over his eyes, he rolls over and immediately falls asleep in seconds, powering off like a machine.

“That’s some freaky shit,” declares JJ and Kiara hums in agreement. By force of habit, JJ’s a light sleeper, capable of picking up on even the slightest of sounds.

Kiara sprawls out on the sofa, wrapping herself in a discarded beach blanket. She lies on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, and grabs her phone from the end table it’s been charging on.

“Did you see what Maddie put on her Story?” she asks, and invites him to lie beside her by saying, “Look.”

It’s a tempting offer to curl up on the couch and fall asleep by her side, but the vodka’s buzz is beginning to fade and JJ can think clearly now. The world comes into focus and JJ sees what he almost jeopardized, the comfortable, stable friendship he endangered. So, he only briefly glimpses over her shoulder, at the video of his classmates pulling dumb skateboarding tricks while drunk on cheap beer, and ruffles her tangled curls just to annoy her.

“Night, Kie,” he says, heading to the front door, intending to trudge outside and climb into the hammock.

“Won’t you be cold?” she frowns.

“Nah,” JJ shrugs, unbothered. Kiara still throws a jumble of beach towels at his retreating back, which he turns to accept with a two-finger salute.

Snuggling underneath the beach towels, which smell very strongly of coconut sunscreen, JJ inhales deeply and tries to think about anything other than the inscrutable look on Kiara’s face as he exited the Chateau.

* * *

Girls are easy.

Not easy in the sleazy sense, which Kiara would probably smack him across the face for implying, but easy as in JJ doesn’t have to try. He takes to flirting like a fish takes to water.

The summer before ninth grade, girls start to look at him and his friends differently. The Pogue boys have begun to grow taller, leaner, and broader, quickly shedding the childish roundness to their cheeks. JJ quickly discovers that ruffling his sun-bleached hair and flashing a lopsided dimpled grin gets him far in life. _You gotta use that boyish charm,_ he taunts after watching a fourteen-year-old John B spectacularly bomb at hitting on some attractive college chicks.

Kiara mimes retching into Pope’s hat, which she’s stolen and made her own.

John B gets his first girlfriend that summer, a mainlander whose grandparents live on the Cut. She’s short and bubbly and sweet, but JJ doesn’t learn her name because she’s only there for a month and he can’t be bothered. Ironically, Kiara accuses him of being a chauvinistic pig until they realize that she doesn’t know the girl’s name either ( _“Sally? Susie? JJ, this isn’t funny!”_ ).

Pope is the only one who remembers, but he refuses to tell them.

Golden afternoons stretch out long and languid before them, and the gang alternates between drinking cheap beer at their secret beach spot or aimlessly drifting down the marsh. In the mornings, JJ rolls out of bed (or the Routledges’ hammock) and does whatever he wants. Mostly he surfs, but sometimes he runs errands for Heyward or offers to mow rich people’s lawns. JJ hasn’t seen his dad in two months, but he hasn’t told the other Pogues yet. They’d only make a big deal out of it, when this freedom is the best thing that’s happened to JJ in a while.

It’s fine, he can keep up with the bills and the groceries. When he doesn’t, there are public showers at the beach and Kiara sneaks them leftovers from the restaurant.

Despite never learning her name, Perky Blonde is the person who gets the Pogues high for the first time. Pope refuses to touch the stuff, convinced that Heyward is capable of smelling weed from a mile away, but the rest of them take a hit from the blunt. That mellow, woozy feeling sets in soon, heightening his senses, and JJ thinks this is fucking _amazing_. Beside him, Kiara wrinkles her nose and pushes the blunt away when it comes back around, but he and John B exchange slow, curling smiles.

If JJ begins setting aside part of his household budget for weed, there’s no one around to condemn his choices. At least it’s better than the empty pill bottles that his dad used to fall asleep holding.

That summer, JJ and his friends begin to make appearances at the Boneyard, the only place on the island where Kooks and Pogues mingle. Keggers are the great equalizer amongst the underage youth of Kildare County, an opportunity to drink tepid beer, listen to shitty music, and make out with a stranger on a starlit beach. Dancing is sometimes involved, especially if there’s enough alcohol content in JJ’s system (or not, shame isn’t really in his vocabulary).

Perky Blonde is somewhere grinding on John B, while Kiara has pulled Pope out into the makeshift dance circle. Surrounded by sunburnt tourists, they make an odd pair. Pope is too self-conscious to do more than awkwardly bop to the music, but Kiara flirtatiously sways her hips and spins him around confidently. Smirking at Pope, who looks a bit as if he’s drowning, JJ ignores the pleading look in his eyes. Instead, he beelines towards a rising sophomore with long, black braids and a white crop top, who’d been shooting him promising smiles.

An hour later, well into his third cup of the champagne of beers, JJ collapses onto the sand and leans against a piece of driftwood. Someone’s started up a small firepit and JJ enjoys the warmth against the cool evening breeze.

“Here.”

A slight figure plops down beside him, and JJ turns to find Kiara offering him a sip from her bottle.

JJ eyes her suspiciously, “Is that water?”

“One sip won’t kill you,” she tells him.

“I don’t want to take my chances.”

“You’ll die if you don’t start hydrating.”

“Sounds fake,” JJ shrugs.

She raises a challenging brow, “Why don’t we ask Pope?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t interrupt him if I were you. He’s with a friend.”

“Pope doesn’t have friends,” Kiara counters. “At least, not friends who aren’t us.”

“I object, Your Honor. Look over there,” JJ smirks and points across the flames, where Pope is engrossed in a conversation with Crop Top Girl, who’s more than a little obsessed with forensic crime shows. “I rest my case.”

“Oh,” she says, looking surprised. “Good for him, I guess.”

“Jealous, Kie?”

She scoffs, “Of what, that?” Kiara vaguely gestures to where it’s painfully obvious that Pope is internally debating whether to go for the kiss. “Absolutely not.”

“Where’s your Prince Charming, then?” asks JJ, because he’s beginning to suspect he’s a masochist, before realizing his gaffe, “Or, um—Princess Charming?”

Narrowing her eyes at him, Kiara scorns, “Just because I’m not trying to sample every STD on the island—”

“Hey! I’ll have you know I’m very selective about my STDs,” JJ protests, barely avoiding a swat to the arm.

“—doesn’t mean that I’m not, you know, doing stuff.”

Curiosity piqued, JJ is very much aware this is a conversation he isn’t sure he wants to have. The boys are used to flirting with Kie (even Pope, once in a blue moon), but it’s done under the impression that it can’t and won’t go any further. _No Pogue-on-Pogue macking_ is a childish rule from the Pogue manifesto, one that became necessary once the boys realized that Kiara was actually, you know, a girl. A really pretty girl.

So even though he and John B often discuss girls, dating, and hook-ups around Kiara, he hadn’t considered that she rarely reciprocates the favor. It’d been easy to assume that Kie simply wasn’t interested in anyone yet, but now JJ’s feeling a bit foolish. If they’d noticed Kiara’s pretty awesome, why not someone else?

And if Kiara is doing stuff, which is totally her business to disclose, does she not feel comfortable telling the Pogues? Like yeah, they’re guys, but they’re also her friends. That’s why they go around wearing her bracelets. And friends are supposed to do that emotional shit where they tell each other things, right?

“You wanna, you know, talk about it?” JJ offers quietly. “About, um, them?”

Kiara gnaws on her bottom lip. “It’s nothing, honestly.”

“You sure?”

Annoyed, she rolls her dark brown eyes, “Yeah, it’s nothing.”

“Okay, that’s cool. If you say so,” he replies, and adds, “Hey Kie?”

“Yeah, JJ?”

“If it’s ever, like, anything, you know you can tell us, right?”

Bumping her shoulder playfully against his, her smile is gentle, “Yeah, I know.”

When it becomes clear that Pope is wiping out hard with Crop Top Girl, Kiara leads them on a rescue mission to salvage what’s left of his reputation. Somehow, they rope both him and John B out on to the dance circle, which is now just a tangle of drunken teenagers swaying to an upbeat tune.

Afterwards, when things start to go to shit, JJ likes to remember this summer as a snapshot of this moment: him and his friends having a good fucking time, their laughter loud and effervescent under the moonlight.


	2. part ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicating this to my roommate, who probably has fifty different versions of this on her laptop.

The week Kiara tells them she’s transferring to Kook Academy, JJ’s dad makes his grand reappearance.

Furious and on the verge of tears, Kiara explains that her parents had enrolled her against her wishes, that they’d already paid thousands of dollars in tuition to some place called Queen Anne’s Academy. That she wouldn’t be boarding on the mainland, that she’d be able to hang out with them every day. That nothing would change, even if her family was moving to an expensive new house in Figure Eight. That she was still a Pogue.

Even if John B and Pope look disconcerted, JJ dismisses their fears. She’s a Pogue through and through, right Kiara? No fancy Kook school can change that.

Deep down, he’s not quite sure if he believes it, but JJ often trusts his friends more than he trusts himself.

At first, it seems like their friendship will make it through the year.

For all her bravado in seventh grade, Kiara is miserable at Kook Academy. She relies heavily on her boys from the Cut to lift her spirits. The afternoons she’s not bogged down by homework, they spend hanging out and making fun of her uniform. Although JJ dutifully informs her that it’s _‘kinda hot’_ , the plaid skirt and navy blazer aren’t anti-establishment enough for her tastes. But whatever goes on in the halls of the rich and spoiled, the Pogues can tell it’s wearing Kie down—her smiles are dimming, her laughter is weaker.

Unfortunately, JJ has problems of his own to worry about. Back home, Luke Maybank only spends his unemployment checks on the essentials before blowing the rest of it on booze, pills, and gambling. His moods are volatile, his drug-laced benders leave him in no condition to find work, let alone raise a willful teenager. JJ begins skipping class more often than not, and it’s a testament to the Maybank reputation that teachers seem more resigned than concerned.

“Dude, that looks bad,” says John B on a balmy September day.

Pope appears alarmed by the mottled purple bruise on JJ’s cheekbone, the yellow-and-green edges reaching the hairline. “What happened to you, bro?”

“You should’ve seen the other guy,” JJ grins toothily, even though the left half of his face aches from where his dad landed a punch two days ago.

 _(‘You listen to me, you little shithead,’_ Luke had said, leaning close, breath smelling of stale beer and cigarettes, hand fisted painfully in the roots of JJ’s blonde hair. _‘You think you’re so smart, huh?’)_

When Sarah Cameron comes into the picture, JJ barely even notices.

At first, she hovers at the edges of Kie’s life—a dimpled smile in her Stories, a tagged video of baby turtles inching across the sand toward foamy waves. Her name comes up casually during their conversations (“Oh, Sarah told me to watch that documentary…”); and then it becomes an offhanded excuse (“I promised Sarah I’d hang out for a bit, but I’ll see you guys later, okay?”).

In the beginning, Kiara’s apologetic about blowing them off, bringing them extra left-overs and whatever she’s swiped from her parents’ liquor closet. But even if Sarah Cameron is the Kook-est of the Kooks, it’s hard to begrudge Kie her newfound friend. It’s harder, however, to bite his tongue and not call her a sell-out for what she asks next.

“C’mon, _please?”_

“Can’t.”

“Won’t.”

“No fucking way.”

It’s mid-October and they’re chilling at the Chateau, piled up on John B’s couch and listening to the steady patter of rain outside and Pope’s questionable Thriller-themed Spotify playlist. As is becoming habitual, Kiara shows up late, but quickly gets back into their good graces with something they’ve been meaning to try—a box of brownie mix and an eighth of weed. Soon, the scent of chocolate and something special wafts from the kitchen, mouthwatering and warm.

“One night, it’s only one night,” Kiara cajoles, pouting in a way she’d never done before befriending Sarah Cameron. “I’ll even throw in dinner at The Wreck—like real dinner, at an actual table.”

“I’m so honored, Kie. I’ve never eaten at a real table before,” JJ sighs longingly, and her punch to his arm nearly disturbs the way he’s precariously balancing in his chair. “Hey!”

“Come on, Pope, please?” she continues, turning to the Pogue most likely to cave.

“Can’t. You know that’s the same weekend as the Math Olympics,” he says, but is decent enough to look sincerely apologetic.

John B is slightly less diplomatic, raising a skeptical brow. “Straight into Kook territory? No thanks, Kie. Besides, my dad says he’s taking me out fishing on the Pogue next Saturday."

No one points out that Big John is around less and less these days, off on some wild goose chase that even John B is finding hard to justify.

Kiara turns to JJ.

“Oh no, no fucking way.”

“C’mon, JJ, _please?”_

“Why not take some Kook? Or literally anybody else.”

“Because I already said I was taking one of you, alright?”

“Damn, couldn’t find a date?”

John B whistles low under his breath. Pope removes the bag of Doritos out from harm’s way.

“Don’t be a dick, JJ,” she rolls her eyes. “Sarah’s brother asked me, okay? And I didn’t want to go with him because he kind of creeps me out, so I panicked and I said I was going with one of you instead.”

And because there’s very little JJ won’t do for his friends, that’s how he ends up agreeing to take Kiara to the homecoming dance at Kook Academy. They don’t even have a football team, he complains to Kiara, grousing while trying on a borrowed penguin suit at Pope’s house. The blazer and pants are a bit short around the cuffs, but JJ doesn’t give a shit, fidgeting with the tie that’s suffocating him. The day before the dance, Kiara gifts him a sunshine yellow bracelet, rather than the boutonniere she threatened to make him wear.

Looping the strands tight around his wrist, she hugs him briefly—loose curls smelling of saltwater and coconut—and pulls back with a fond smile.

“Thanks for doing this, JJ.”

Grey dawn is creeping through JJ’s window when Luke Maybank stumbles home, the pungent scent of liquor and sweat trailing after him. Having gambled away two hundred dollars the prior night, JJ’s dad is in a thunderous mood. There’s little JJ can do to avoid setting him off.

Maybe it’s the way JJ pads softly into the kitchen that morning. Or maybe it’s the way he hesitantly asks, “Hey, dad?” when JJ finds him staring at the letters piling up from the collection agency.

Bright red handprints wrap around his throat, visible despite his fading tan. A deep ache in his side as he attempts to lift himself up from the kitchen floor, wincing at tiny shards of broken glass that crunch into his palms. The house might be quiet, empty, but his ears are still ringing. Then he’s staggering to the bathroom, locking the door behind him and climbing into the tub, letting the running water wash away the worst of his injuries.

Slanted moonlight across the white tile tells JJ he should already be at Pope’s by now, getting dressed. His phone, forgotten in his room, has twenty-five unread messages and five missed calls. Pressing play on Kiara’s frantic voice notes, they go from confused to concerned to absolutely livid.

\--

 **popemobile:** Where are you? [7:07 pm]

 **popemobile:** Kiara’s waiting [7:15 pm]

 **popemobile:** And she’s pissed [7:17 pm]

 **popemobile:** Bro are you coming? [7:32 pm]

\--

 **john baewatch:** dude??? [7:42 pm]

 **john baewatch:** why do i have 4 missed calls from kie? [7:43 pm]

 **john baewatch:** u ok? [7:44 pm]

\--

 **kie:** Fuck you. [8:42 pm]

\--

With his phone propped up on his chest as he lies in bed, JJ watches the Kook Academy homecoming dance unfold through social media. Definitely a masochist.

Brief glimpses of a country club reception hall, flowering centerpieces, and soft golden light that makes Kiara’s skin glow in her selfies. She looks like sunshine in some gauzy, floaty yellow dress; her lashes seem darker and fuller, her lips pink and glossy and grinning. There’s Sarah Cameron in most of her posts—sparkling brown eyes, beach blonde waves, with some douchebag in pink pants as her date.

John B forwards him the video of the girls giggling in the fanciest bathroom JJ’s ever seen, Sarah pressing a kiss to Kie's cheek.

Another dude lingers at the edges of their videos: slicked-back blonde hair, smarmy expression, and a hand that slips around Kiara’s waist for a group picture. _‘rafe c.’_ is his profile name on Instagram, and JJ scrolls down his grid to find it full of barbecues at Figure Eight mansions, bros in pastel Vineyard Vines t-shirts, and self-assured smirks behind dark sunglasses.

JJ’s stomach clenches.

Lucky for him, the following week is fall break for Kildare County High School. No one misses him for the day or two he spends nursing his injuries. The guys might be blowing up his inbox, but he waves them off with lame excuses and they know better than to press him for answers. Walking into the Chateau three days later, with his tail tucked between his legs, he finds only John B and Pope lounging on the couch and scrolling through their phones.

“Dude,” says John B, which is his way of saying _‘JJ, you look like shit._ ’

“Where’ve you been?” demands Pope, looking concerned.

“Yachting, dude. My one true passion, remember?” JJ replies nonchalantly, before asking, “Where’s Kie?”

They both shrug in reply.

Pope shoots him a significant look, but JJ avoids his eyes. He’d sent Kiara an apology text a day ago, filled with some bullshit about being too stoned to function, but he hadn’t received a reply.

The Pogues see less and less of Kiara after that.

If she responds to invites on their group chat, it’s often too late and a vague excuse about making plans with Sarah. Her online presence, which was once dedicated to environmental causes and social justice movements and the occasional picture of friends and family, is now polluted with selfies of her Kook friends and sunsets on their private docks. Whenever Kiara does turn up, things are strange and tense.

Waiting for a blowout fight that never comes, JJ doesn’t know whether it’s worse to be slowly iced out like he doesn’t even matter anymore.

Freshman year of high school doesn’t really get much better after that.

By January, Kiara has stopped replying altogether—the boys can’t be bothered to kick her out of the chat, so she remains in the background like a silent ghost. The remaining Pogues still hang out together in their free time, but life doesn’t feel as carefree as it did before.

Stressed by the distant prospect of college applications, Pope applies himself to his studying, throwing all of his energy into his grades and extracurriculars. Both John B and JJ start picking up odd jobs, albeit for different reasons. John B is saving up for parts to repair a beat-up VW van his dad has in the garage, while JJ’s dad has yet to find a steady source of income.

For brief moment in March, JJ gets a gig as a server at the country club—the uniform is itchy, the white button-up makes him look like he’s joined the Young Republicans. But he makes good tips by shooting dimpled grins at little old Kook ladies, gaining some fans in the bridge club. Sometimes he sees Kie in the distance, riding on the back of golf carts with Sarah Cameron or drinking green juices at the café, yoga bag slung over one shoulder. JJ never gives her the opportunity to ignore him.

Eventually, the job is too good to last. Some silverware goes missing and it’s easy for management to pin it on the Maybank kid, regardless of whether or not JJ did it. Who knew rich people were stupid enough to buy silverware made out of actual silver? He pockets a teaspoon in retaliation and goes back to mowing Figure Eight lawns.

Other than handling the impending crush of adulthood, the Pogues are still Pogues. They still do reckless shit together, like spending afternoons learning tricks on the dirt bike that JJ buys secondhand. They drink when they can, light up when they can, and avoid talking about their obvious missing piece.

It isn’t as if there are many authority figures around to stop them. In retrospect, JJ wonders if they should have picked up on the clues: Big John growing more erratic, spending hours on end in a cluttered office, disappearing for days at a time. It’s his new job, says John B, when they ask about the fatherly figure who’s more conspicuously absent than ever.

But he looks uncertain, as if reassuring himself.

Clapping a hand on his shoulder, JJ tells his best friend not to worry. In his experience, dads tend to stick around, even when they kind of suck.

* * *

The next time JJ sees Kiara in person, it’s the summer before sophomore year.

At first, the Pogues don’t recognize her.

JJ doesn’t know why, because—for all intents and purposes—it’s the same girl. The same Kiara who protested the lack of gender-neutral bathrooms in the eighth grade, who drooled on John B’s couch while napping, and who sang Bob Marley under her breath. It’s the same Kiara, except she’s not.

“She’s gone full Kook,” declares John B, pinpointing what JJ was struggling to wrap his brain around.

Pope nods soundlessly in agreement.

Around them, the Boneyard is packed with teenagers enjoying the first party of the summer. Last year’s seniors have shown up in full force, and JJ knows there’s a pick-up truck piled high with kegs and plastic cups hidden somewhere in the treeline. With the last dredges of amber sunlight slipping past the horizon and music blaring on someone’s shitty speakers, JJ’s feeling more alive than he has all year.

Which is, of course, when they spot her.

Some Kooks have deigned to make an appearance, mingling amongst themselves at the fringes of the party. At their center is Sarah Cameron, who laughs and flirts with some dudes hanging on to her every word, and by her side is Kie, basking in her light. She looks happy, JJ notes, before cataloguing all the other changes—the lacy white dress and the gold glinting at her throat. The dark curls, often wrapped up and twisted out of the way, now spill loosely onto her shoulders and down her back.

There’s a familiar-looking bracelet wrapped around her wrist, and something inside JJ rears its ugly head. He needs a beer, now, and he trudges through a crowd of horny teenagers to find one.

“So, do you, like, surf?”

He’s vaguely aware of the brunette tourist plastered to his side, the night’s shadows barely disguising the interested look in her eyes. This is easy, or at least, it should be. Usually, JJ has no qualms about casual hook-ups—he’s upfront about his intentions (or lack thereof) and ensures, to the best of his ability, that it’s a mutually beneficial experience. By this point, JJ should be hyping up his surfing skills or saying whatever stupid shit fifteen-year-old guys say to seem impressive in front of a cute girl.

Nothing of substance.

JJ won’t tell her that surfing is the only thing in the world that he’s good at, nor that it’s the only thing that brings him any peace. That surrendering to the surge of the ocean, riding out the push and pull of the tide, is the only time in his life when he feels in control. Accomplished. Worthy.

He won’t tell her any of the things he could once tell Kiara. Not that he’d have to, since sometimes it felt like Kie just _knew_ , the way she’d known that JJ’s restless energy was indicative of something more than just a troublesome streak. (Their public school didn’t have the funds or resources to help JJ, but he’d been amused and flattered to watch Kiara lead the campaign on his behalf.)

But Kiara’s busy ignoring them, living her new life as a ‘ _Sarah Cameron’s best friend’_ , and this tourist girl is closer and smells vaguely of coconuts and JJ doesn’t object to the feel of her mouth against his.

After forty-five minutes of fooling around in the dark, she presses a kiss to his jaw and struts back to her cohort of giggling friends, who shoot him appreciative looks. JJ might be many things _(‘Worthless,’_ whispers a voice that sounds Luke Maybank), but at least he’s not ugly.

Fingers smoothing his hair back down, JJ sends the group a flirtatious smirk and heads back to the keg for a refill. For the next hour or so, he circles the edges of the Boneyard, bouncing from group to group and letting himself be roped into various conversations. First, Pope’s friends from the Honor Roll, who always look at JJ as if he’s about to bite, and then a crowd he’d met on the surfing circuit. There’s a group of Tourons who bat their eyelashes and smell of tanning oil, as well as shit-faced Kook whose wallet he swipes from a tempting back pocket. As a result, JJ’s lost sight of John B, who’d been talking to some girl, and left Pope to socialize with the other mathletes.

At some point in the night, he reaches for a pack of cigarettes. Flicking open his Zippo lighter, JJ lights up and takes a long drag, enjoying the bite of nicotine in his throat and lungs. Pope has already given up on curtailing most of JJ’s worst habits.

“Since when do you smoke?”

Her voice startles him.

Kiara appears out of thin air, or at least it seems so until JJ realizes he’s drifted too close to the Kooks for his tastes. That Rafe dude and his friends watch him suspiciously, like he’s a wild animal trespassing on their property.

“Since when do you care?” he counters and blows smoke in her direction for emphasis.

Crossing her arms, Kiara frowns, “I care.”

“You do? You have a pretty poor way of showing it,” JJ raises an eyebrow.

Kiara seems stricken, even more so when John B materializes at JJ’s elbow and says, “Dude, you gotta come see this, there’s this… Oh. Hey, Kie.”

It’s an offhanded greeting, thrown over his shoulder just as if she were a casual acquaintance, and his eyes slide over her with disinterest. Immediately, John B hauls JJ away to witness a keg-stand competition between two kids on the swim team.

JJ doesn’t look back.

* * *

Storm season hits harder than ever that year—category three, category four, even a category five hurricane that ravages the island and forces a mass evacuation. Vicious winds howl wild and untethered in the darkness, grey clouds rumbling overhead, and the sky unleashes a torrent of rain that leaves the Outer Banks flooded for days. Debris piles up on the side of the roads. The residents of the Cut are left scrambling to patch up the damage, while the lights of Figure Eight shimmer mockingly in the distance.

Big John disappears in September, days after a big storm.

Although Hurricane Dorian leaves a trail of destruction in its wake, the ocean is always more resilient than land. Cloudless blue skies and turbulent waters mean the boys are back chasing waves only days after the storm, recklessly ignoring the possibility of rip currents along the shore. Pope tries to warn them, but even he can’t resist the temptation.

Big John leaves abruptly that week, taking the money set aside for the last month of rent, and promising to be back soon. Seven days pass, then fourteen, and then John B’s uncle is banging down the sheriff’s door and demanding they organize a search party.

Witnesses report seeing a man matching Big John’s description aboard a boat, close to the harbor on the day he left. After that, he vanished. Why he went into deeper waters or who he was with are questions that remain unanswered. ‘ _Lost at sea’_ is the bullshit the authorities try to feed them.

Dark eyes full of pity, Sheriff Peterkin is quietly sympathetic when she breaks the news to the pitiful group huddled inside her police station.

“No, no he’s not—he, he can’t be. Look, you don’t get it, he said he’d be back,” John B argues brokenly, surging upward only to be restrained by his uncle and JJ. “Look again. Please, you have to, he has to be there. _Please.”_

“C’mon, man,” JJ says in his ear, but there’s a desperate, wild-eyed look to his friend.

Without a body to confirm Big John’s death, John B refuses to have a funeral or a memorial. Instead, his uncle lets the Pogues hunker down at the Chateau for the weekend, turning a blind eye when they let beer cans and empty pizza boxes pile up around them. By Sunday evening, JJ has a crick in his neck from sleeping huddled together on the Routledge’s couch.

“He’s not dead,” says John B, on his fourth tallboy of the night. “I’d feel it, right? I’d know if he was gone.”

Concerned, Pope glances sideways at JJ as if to say, _‘This isn’t healthy, right?’_

JJ says nothing. When his mother passed, she slipped through his fingers like smoke. One moment she was there, struggling to breathe and holding his dad’s hand, and then she wasn’t.

Around them, life goes back to some laughable attempt at normality. Pope returns to school the next Monday, dragging John B and JJ back with him, even if they’re restless and unfocused. The boys skip more classes than they attend, but JJ likes to think the teachers will give John B an A for effort—something about dead parents inspires adults to cut you some slack. The small hill of Tupperware containers sent by Mrs Heyward starts decreasing, reduced to the occasional leftovers and invitations to dinner. By early October, Uncle T packs his bags and heads west, leaving John B scrambling to figure out rent.

In the dense, heavy misery of those days, JJ almost doesn’t realize.

Sarah Cameron’s party, plastered all over Kook socials, is the biggest event of the year. At their public high school, some classmates seriously discuss the possibility of gate-crashing, but JJ and John B are too busy smoking behind the bleachers to care. Only Pope notices, pointing out what soon becomes glaringly obvious to the rest of them.

Even though he ditches them to work on his scholarship application on a Saturday night, Pope belies his work ethic by forwarding the video to their Instagram group.

\--

**to: john.b.routledge, thatmaybankkid**

_mrpopeheyward sent you a video_

**mrpopeheyward:** Is it me? Or isn’t Kie missing? [11:23 pm]

\--

“I saw Kie today,” says Pope two weeks later. They’re chilling at the Chateau, sprawled atop the hammock, daylight fading behind the western horizon. “She stopped by the store.”

JJ’s face darkens but he doesn’t respond.

Too casually, John B looks up from his phone and adds, “She texted me a week ago. About my dad.”

Taking a final swig from his beer, JJ swings his legs over the side and stands up brusquely, marching towards the house. He doesn’t want to talk about Kiara, not now. Not after she’d cut the other Pogues loose in order to go full Kook.

“Where’re you going?” calls out Pope behind him.

“To get more fucking beer!” shouts JJ over his shoulder.

It doesn’t bother him.

It shouldn’t bother him.

It’s over and done with, Kiara is out of their lives, and no amount of small friendly gestures and _‘I’m sorry you dad died’_ texts can just erase a year of ditching them for Sarah Cameron. JJ Maybank doesn’t believe in misreading clear-cut signals or hoping for the best when all signs point otherwise. Kie had left them, all of them, after talking all that crap about wanting to be a true Pogue.

Sure, after that stupid Kook dance, he might have deserved losing her friendship. He’d accepted that, JJ knows he tends to fuck up the good things in his life. But Pope and John B did not deserve being left in the cold like that. They were supposed to be fucking family. Pogues for life, right?

So, when a shame-faced Kiara shows up a week later on the Chateau’s porch, JJ doesn’t even bother to stick around to hear her lame-ass apology.

“She says she’s sorry,” says Pope the next day, when they’re out making deliveries for Heyward. A pair of black aviators obscure his friend’s eyes, but JJ knows Pope’s gaging his reaction.

“Oh, and you believe her, do you?” scoffs JJ, tightening his grip on the boat’s steering wheel. 

Pope shrugs, “Kie’s a terrible liar.”

\--

 **john baewatch:** she and i are cool man [6:47 pm]

 **john baewatch:** we talked it out [6:47 pm]

 **john baewatch:** water under the bridge [7:00 pm]

\--

 **kie:** I’m sorry [10:15 pm] _(Unread)_

 **kie:** Can we talk? [10:16 pm] _(Unread)_

\--

It’s not that they’ve welcomed her back with open arms, not exactly. There are still moments when that year apart becomes apparent and a gulf widens between them—inside jokes she doesn’t get, references she doesn’t understand. The mere mention of Sarah Cameron leaves her scowling. But to JJ’s open-mouthed disbelief, John B and Pope willingly ease back into their old friendship. It doesn’t hurt that Kiara brings them leftovers and beer (and fresh fruit, once she discovers John B is living off instant ramen).

Meanwhile, JJ finds it much harder to forgive.

JJ rebuffs her attempts to reach out, ignoring her messages when the notifications pop up on the screen. Whenever they coincide at the Chateau, he’s the first to leave. Whenever she tries to pull him aside at the Boneyard, he shakes her off.

He keeps it up until Thanksgiving. If he weren’t so pissed off, JJ would be proud of himself. This grudge serves as a big middle finger to all the teachers who despaired of his limited attention span.

There’s a bleak celebration at the Maybank household on Thursday, the kind where his dad gets hammered the night before and sleeps on the couch throughout most of the day. When JJ was a kid, his mom would make sweet potato pie and have the whole house smelling of cinnamon. Now, he creeps downstairs and grabs a half-empty bag of chips on his way out.

Careful to avoid any loud noises, JJ slips out the front door and heads for the ocean. Even if it’s too cold to swim right now, he still slips off his shoes and socks. Standing on the shore, enjoying the bracing cold of the water biting at his ankles.

His phone buzzes in his pocket.

\--

 **john baewatch:** friendsgiving tomorrow. my place. 5pm. [2:34 pm]

 **john baewatch:** booze not optional [2:34 pm]

 **john baewatch:** pls dont 'acquire' another turkey [2:36 pm]

\--

His dad is gone by the time JJ comes back.

Wherever Luke Maybank escaped to, he doesn’t leave a note. JJ uses his absence to pick up the garbage and dirty laundry that litters the house. Stuffing empty bottles and greasy fast-food wrappers into a trash bag, JJ wants to believe his dad’s at work—the manager of the impound lot calls whenever Luke misses a shift. Silence is usually good news.

JJ washes his sheets, scrubs at the black gunk festering in the bathroom sink, and even sprays his dad’s room with some air freshener he finds in the kitchen. There’s not much in the fridge other than a six-pack of beer, an empty container of what used to be Mexican take-out, a moldy hunk of cheese, and a sizable collection of ketchup and hot sauce packets. Feeling festive, JJ grabs a can of Miller and scrapes the mold off the cheddar, bringing out the rest of his chips as a side. Flicking open his beer, he puts his boots up on the kitchen table.

The sun is bleeding deep orange by the time an SUV pulls into the driveway (or that patch of dirt in front of his house that passes for a driveway). Squinting at the outside, JJ clambers to his feet when he realizes who exactly is parked in his yard.

“What the _hell_ are you doing here?” he shouts from the screen-covered porch.

Kiara slams the car door shut.

“I want to talk,” she demands, glaring at him.

“Who the fuck gave you my address?”

“JJ, listen to me, I want to talk,” she stalks closer, hands balled up at her sides.

“I heard you the first time, you talked, now get out,” he retorts flatly, keeping his eye in the direction of the road.

JJ doesn’t know when Luke will be back. Kiara knows his dad exists, the same way everyone in his life knows him as ‘the Maybank kid’. But there’s a big difference between knowing Luke Maybank is a crappy guy and witnessing his less-than-stellar parenting skills firsthand. Besides, JJ has no idea what kind of mood he’ll be in when he comes back—the last thing he wants is for Kiara to get caught in that crossfire.

“I’m not leaving until you let me apologize,” she’s staring up at him in defiance, and JJ realizes she’s smaller than he remembers.

“For fuck’s sake, Kie, you need to leave,” he says, marching over to her fancy SUV and pulling the door open, gesturing for her to climb inside.

“Let me apologize.”

“You did. Apology not accepted,” he declares. “Now get out of here before my dad comes back, okay?”

And Kie’s eyes widen. Her gaze slides past him, taking in her surroundings.

Finally, JJ thinks she might understand. It makes him feel vulnerable, yes—the other Pogues have learned to steer clear of the Maybank house for a reason. The dilapidated, ramshackle building has the undeniable markings of hard times and unhappiness. The paint is peeling, the roof is missing shingles, and Luke has punched through more than one mosquito screen. Where Caroline Maybank had once kept a neat little garden is now a patch of overgrown weeds, flowers uprooted when eight-year-old JJ had been unable to keep them alive.

Instead of doing the rational thing for someone to do, especially someone as relatively untouched by hardship as Kiara, she decides to stand her ground.

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“I mean no, I’m not leaving until you hear me out.”

Her eyes are dark, intense, and JJ is reminded of the last time she looked at him like that. Dude, _not the time._

“Fine,” he grinds out, making an executive decision. JJ rounds the car and climbs into the passenger seat. “We can talk somewhere else.”

For a second, she hesitates, but then seems to recognize this is the best alternative and joins him inside the car, which is still toasty from the heater. JJ’s about to ask if the seat has a butt-warmer before he remembers he’s still holding a grudge. Instead, he shortly tells Kiara to drive _‘anywhere else, I don’t fucking care.’_ They ride in silence, JJ fidgeting with the window and tapping his fingers on the armrest, staring resolutely at the road ahead.

There’s a dusky blue sky above the water when they finally reach Rixon’s Cove, a sliver of a crescent moon rising in the eastern horizon. JJ wonders if she knows she’s playing dirty. He’s loved this spot since Big John led him and John B there as skinny little nine-year-olds, sharing a part of his childhood with them. There are no tourists for a few miles around, only the low rushing sound of waves approaching the shore.

Despite the November chill, JJ sits down as close as he can get to the tide, slipping off his shoes and digging his feet into the damp sand. Beside him, Kiara does the same, wrapping her arms around her legs. She’s wearing a faded UNC sweatshirt, her mother’s alma mater, and loose sweatpants. There’s no makeup or shiny earrings, and the bandana pulling her hair back looks a lot like the one she wore two summers ago.

There’s apprehension in her eyes, a hesitation to her movements that JJ doesn’t associate with Kie. The girl he knows—he _knew_ —was self-assured, straightforward, and tended to tackle things head-on when possible.

She’s quiet for a while. JJ begins to wonder why she’s dragged him all the way out here, on the verge of demanding why she’s wasting his time, when Kiara finally finds her voice.

“I’m sorry,” she tries for the hundredth time. Kiara doesn’t sound angry anymore, just quietly dejected. “I just wanted to say… I know I was a bad friend when y’all needed me the most. Honestly, last year was so messed up,” she frowns. “It was a shitty move to ditch you guys.”

“It was,” JJ agrees flatly, because it’s the truth.

To her credit, Kiara doesn’t flinch. “I know, and I feel _terrible._ I know you don’t think so, but I do. I feel awful,” she exhales. “And the worst part is I don’t even know why I did it.”

“Was it because of me?” he asks, because he can’t help himself. JJ scratches at a freshly healed scar on his knee, the skin pink and tender.

A crinkle appears between her brows. “What?”

He sighs heavily, “Because of what happened, you know, with that dance?”

Comprehension dawns on Kie’s face and she denies, “No, not at all. Like, maybe, at first? But no, JJ, this is all on me. God, that stupid dance,” and she buries her face in her hands. “That was such an awful night.”

“Then why?” demands JJ, because he definitely doesn’t understand. There’s a whole year’s worth of guilt and betrayal and anger balled up tight in his chest, and now he doesn’t even have a reason for it. “Why did you do it?”

She pauses, conflicted.

“I don’t know.” The excuse comes out flimsy, half-hearted. It rubs at JJ the wrong way.

“So, what happened then? You were just hypnotized by Sarah Cameron?” he’s derisive, purposefully picking at an open wound. “The call of the country club?

Kiara’s jaw tightens. Even in the evening light, JJ uncomfortably recognizes the faint shimmer of tears in her eyes.

“Shut up, JJ,” she says, voice thick. “Stop making this harder than it is. I know I was a really crappy friend, okay? I don’t even know how to start making it up to you guys…” Kie looks away. “I’m not even sure if I deserve to be your friend anymore.”

She’s not quite crying, not the way JJ’s seen her cry before—sobbing at her grandmother’s funeral or sniffling during those animal cruelty documentaries. But there’s something like broken glass in her tone, how her breath catches on the word _‘deserve’,_ and JJ wonders for the first time if he’s being unfair.

Ashamed, he remembers being thirteen-years-old, sitting atop his stolen bike, and a small brown hand offering him friendship.

Easy. Uncomplicated. Without hesitation.

“You know, someone gave me a second chance, once,” he says, after a beat. “I think it’s time I returned the favor.”

Kiara turns to stare at him. “Are you sure?” she asks, and JJ is surprised to realize that she’s giving him an out. That she hadn’t really expected to be pardoned.

If he’s honest, there’s very little that JJ’s willing to forgive.

The world has taught him plenty about cruelty and unkindness. It should surprise no one that JJ has hardened the softest parts of himself accordingly—after all, he’s used to disappointing and being disappointed.

But despite the crap hand that life has dealt him, JJ knows there is very little he wouldn’t do for those he considers his friends. They’re his ride-or-die, his sink-or-swim. He’s tied his lifeline to theirs, regardless of whether they’ve reciprocated, and there is no turning back.

And if Kiara wants to return, the girl who extended her compassion when she had no reason to do so, then JJ knows that, at the bare minimum, he owes her a chance. One last shot.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he replies firmly, and asks, “Why not?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Kiara’s cynical. “I’m a bit of a leper right now.”

JJ smirks, “Well, I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole, that’s for sure.”

There’s a pause, and a smile pulls at the corners of her full mouth. “Liar.”

\--

 **popemobile:** Dude, did you talk to Kie? [12:12 am]

 **popemobile:** I told her not to go, but you know Kie [12:12 am]

 **popemobile:** Are you mad? [12:13 am]

 **popemobile:** Bro? [12:15 am]

\--

The Chateau is quiet when JJ shows up the next afternoon.

Uncle T must have left already, but there was a clear attempt at making the house hospitable. The beer cans and to-go boxes have been discarded, the ashtray emptied, and the general clutter arranged into slightly neater piles. The whole room smells strongly of air freshener, except for the scent of something spicy-sweet wafting from the kitchen.

“John B, you here?” JJ calls out, lowering a 24-pack of PBR to the floor.

Instead, a head of dark curls pokes out from the short hallway leading to the bedrooms. “JJ?”

It’s not exactly awkward, but he pauses in the entrance. She’s wearing an apron with her family restaurant’s logo scrawled across the chest, over a cropped tie-dye shirt and flowy blue pants. Dark curls are piled haphazardly atop her head and tiny, dainty studs gleam at her earlobes. The purplish circles under her eyes are somehow gone.

“They’ll be right back, they just went to the store,” Kiara says to break the silence, and JJ realizes he forgot to reply. “I’m making pie, you wanna help?”

When John B and Pope return to the Chateau, they arrive with bagfuls of ice and a container of Mrs Heyward’s turkey leftovers, only to find a bitter argument already underway. Something smells burnt, like the unpleasant, acrid scent of blackened sugar. JJ is being pushed out of the kitchen, repeatedly stabbed in the back with an old wooden spoon.

“It was an accident,” he protests loudly, hands thrown up in the air. “How was I supposed to know it would do that?”

“Because I told you it would, dumbass!” Kiara retorts. “Get out of—Oh, hey guys.”

Marching past the newcomers, Kie throws open windows to let out the smoke and berates JJ for ruining her caramel topping. John B and Pope watch in stunned silence as she roughly sits him on the couch and hands him a bowl and spoon, with the stern instruction to, “Eat this and, for fuck’s sake, don’t touch anything else.”

Turning to the other two boys, Kiara frowns, “Aren’t you going to set the table? Pope, go heat up those leftovers. Did you bring me the canned cranberry sauce?”

Relaxing into the couch, JJ grins as he watches the other Pogues scramble to fulfill Kie’s marching orders. He sighs contentedly, licking the remains of sweet potato pie filling from the spoon. It tastes just like his mom's.

* * *

Things don’t go back to the way they were before, but JJ doesn’t expect them to.

Even though having his friends around 24/7 buoys his spirits, John B is stuck in the strange limbo of someone who has experienced loss but refuses to grieve. As a result, he grows increasingly reckless in his attempts to distract himself from his dad’s disappearance, but JJ knows it would be hypocritical to try and stop him.

Instead, Pope serves as the group’s only source of reason and opposition. He’s not a very good one, since he tends to cave whenever Kiara sends him a reproachful look.

“John B needs our help,” she says, and JJ can see the guilt in her eyes.

Their sophomore year, JJ finds himself ending fights more often than he’s starting them, usually jumping into the melee whenever John B is involved. He doesn’t mind, not even when Kiara is dabbing rubbing alcohol at his jaw and frowning in disappointment. It’s not like they often lose: while John B might throw a fairly decent punch, JJ has no reservations about fighting dirty and drawing blood if necessary. But it does occur to him—in a moment of rare self-reflection—that whichever way John B is coping, it’s not exactly healthy.

None of them are brave enough to suggest that Big John might be gone for good.

When the days begin to lengthen and warm up, the Pogues head back to the water whenever possible. They spend most of their free time aboard Big John’s old boat, either fishing in the early hours of dawn or simply chilling, smoking and drinking late into the evening. Time feels blurry when they’re all together, JJ muses, idly watching starlight swirl in the sky above them. When he voices that thought out loud, Pope tells him to lay off the weed.

Kiara’s return comes with more perks than just friendship bracelets. Her parents might have caught on to the beers she’s been stealing, but she makes up for it by flirting with the store clerk while flashing a fake ID.

“This cost you fifty dollars?” wonders JJ. He holds up the state identification card to the light, comparing the grainy Kiara in the picture with the one reaching for the plastic card. “You don’t even look eighteen.”

“The bikini helps, dumbass,” she rolls her eyes, and swishes dark curls over her shoulder.

Just another trick learnt during her Kook year, among many others for which JJ would have to write Sarah Cameron a thank you letter.

It wasn’t as if the boys hadn’t noticed.

Before freshman year, JJ could have outright told anyone that Kie was one of the prettiest girls he knew—not that anyone, let alone Kie herself, cared for his opinion. There were plenty of things he liked about her: the way her hair spiraled loose and wild, the sunshine in her smile, the warmth of her brown eyes. As far as JJ was concerned, these were just sort of non-negotiable facts.

But after the year of Sarah Cameron? Well, the Pogues come to the unsettling realization that Kiara is not just pretty, she’s also definitely hot. Like _really hot._

Bikinis and high-waisted shorts come to replace loose t-shirts and board shorts, emphasizing curves that JJ thinks weren’t there a year prior. At first, they wonder if she doesn’t realize, since she’s still just as affectionate. Falling into their previous dynamic, Kie doesn’t really think twice about throwing her long, toned legs atop theirs or using their shoulders as her personal headrests. Trying his best not to stare like an idiot, JJ still catches himself wondering at the slope of her neck, the soft swell of her breasts, or the bellybutton dimpling her muscled abdomen.

There’s a momentary flash of guilt, but then Kie meets his gaze and raises a challenging brow, a self-confident smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. That’s when he notices that, on occasion, Kie looks at them too. More subtle, sure, but her eyes still will linger for a second too long on their bare torsos, the slightest hint of appreciation in her dark eyes.

Whenever that happens, JJ likes to flex and show off for her benefit. It usually earns him a towel whip to the arm, and then a second one to the butt for waggling his eyebrows and calling her kinky.

Kie might roll her eyes, but she’s smiling.

And, of course, Kiara flirts now—with them, with unsuspecting Tourons, with the clerk at 7/11 who starts giving her free slushies. When she’s around the Pogues, it’s different: friendly, playful, even affectionate. But around other dudes, Kiara wields her smile like a weapon.

“Doesn’t this reinforce the patriarchy?” asks JJ, slurping from the half-consumed jumbo cup of frozen drink that she didn’t pay for.

Mouth stained cherry-red, Kie shrugs dismissively, “Might as well get something out of the system that oppresses me.”

The boys cope differently with this new, very attractive version of their best friend.

At first, Pope is the worst off. The poor guy flushes, stammering out replies, and averts his eyes, but this only incites a bout of relentless teasing behind Kie’s back until he’s somewhat desensitized. Even John B occasionally gets over his own blushes and returns her advances, with a freckled grin that rarely crosses his face lately. They’re closer now, him and Kie, and JJ knows they talk often, sometimes finding them having heart-to-hearts on the Chateau porch.

And JJ, you might ask?

Well, JJ has no sense of personal dignity. In his opinion, a general rule in life should be that it’s too short and crappy to feel trivial things like embarrassment.

When it comes to Kie, JJ gives as good as he gets and has no regrets, even when she finally swats him away laughing. It confuses people outside of the Pogues: that she’ll pull him close when they dance together at the Boneyard, the sway of her hips against his, the warmth of her breath in the shell of his ear. Or they’ll question that he’s comfortable resting his head in her lap when they smoke, her fingers absentmindedly threading through the strands of his hair.

A few of the other girls don’t like it.

There are girls now. Not as many as the other Pogues seem to think, but certainly a couple. They emerge from bedroom doors at the Chateau the morning after, grabbing their tiny purses and slipping out into the sunlight, bleary-eyed and messy-haired.

Sex is easy, JJ finds, because it’s mostly physical. He’s always excelled at endeavors that require less thinking and more doing. He learns the same way he learnt how to surf—to be patient and listen, to stop second-guessing himself, to chase the thrill of a cresting wave. The sweltering heat of skin sliding against skin, the feel of sharp teeth nibbling at his collarbone and nails scraping between his shoulder-blades. A satisfied sigh, limbs loose and heavy after culmination.

Most of the time, his hook-ups understand the very little that JJ brings to the table. Girls who go after the Maybank kid, he discovers, prefer short-term fulfillment over long-term expectations. Not that he’s particularly offended. As Kie likes to remind him, women are just as capable of doing no-strings-attached.

He doesn’t ask if that includes her, only silently notes that her interests rarely last longer than the two-week mark. For some reason, they don’t appreciate always coming second-best to the Pogues. Similarly, some of his flings take offense to waking alone and finding him having breakfast with Kiara, eating her weird birdseed oatmeal and tuning out the NPR playing in the background.

It’s confusing to other people (and yeah, if he’s honest, it sometimes confuses JJ too), but he’s decided he’s cool with it.

Besides, it’s not seriously going to happen.

Sure, ‘ _No_ _Pogue-on-Pogue macking’_ is supposed to be a rule. But it’s a stupid rule, one that he’s certain Kiara would give no fucks about breaking if she genuinely wanted one of them. And if Kie were going to date a Pogue, JJ already knows who.

There’d be no Pogues without John B. He’s their dying star, the one pulling them together into this close-knit, patchwork family. Without him, the Pogues lose their purpose, their reason for being. And yes, Kiara cares about them all, but she cares about John B the most. It’s evident in the gentle way she reaches for him: the softness in her voice, the thoughtfulness in her gaze. A hand that comes to rest, kind and comforting, on a freckled forearm whenever the storm clouds in his eyes refuse to pass.

And JJ _sees_ that, he sees the way she looks at his best friend, and he understands. No one has ever looked at JJ that way, but he knows what the molten warmth in her eyes in means.

So, yeah, JJ enjoys whatever crumbs Kie offers him. He certainly won’t make any apologies for it.

For one, because she’s a super-hot rich chick slumming with him and his rough-around-the-edges friends. More importantly, because he knows that Kie loves them and, for her, every day is an attempt to make up for abandoning them when they needed her the most. Because, as a result, she’s throwing her heart and soul into lifting John B out of whatever dark headspace he’s sinking into, trying to save JJ’s best friend from himself.

And JJ can respect that.

How could he not? Everything good in his life he owes to John B.

* * *

It happens during spring break, the one before the worst summer of their lives.

The Pogues haul a legless John B back to the Chateau from a sunset party at the Boneyard. This time it was a combination of beer and Malibu rum shots, supplied by a senior who definitely struggles to make eye-contact in Kiara’s presence. John B goes down like a typewriter in a swimming pool, needing JJ to help him stay upright after the alcohol hits. Pope insists on driving them home before midnight, a judgmental look in his eye and hands tight around the steering wheel.

In the back of the VW van, Kiara attempts to dribble water into John B’s mouth, while JJ snacks on an apple he found in her canvas bag.

With Pope’s help, they tuck John B into bed, propping him on his side and leaving a wastebasket at the edge of his mattress. As a precaution, they leave his bedroom door ajar, although soon he’s snoring and snuffling quietly in his sleep.

Nervously glancing at his phone, Pope chooses to head home on his bike—Heyward’s been on his ass for sneaking around and breaking curfew.

“G’night,” Kie mumbles into their embrace. JJ looks away.

If Pope lingers for a beat too long, JJ won’t be the one to point it out. “See you tomorrow,” he says instead, bringing his friend into a one-armed hug.

Once they’ve watched Pope’s high-visibility lights disappear into the darkness, Kie shuffles back inside and disappears into the hall, leaving JJ to close the front door behind them. When she returns from John B’s room, she’s pulled on a faded Carolina Panthers hoodie and switched out her jeans for old sweats JJ recognizes as his. Sinking into the couch beside him, Kie rests her sock-covered feet on top of the coffee table and leans into JJ’s torso.

A slow, baritone voice narrates Big John’s favorite National Geographic special: a deep-sea excavation of a decomposing shipwreck. With only the hall light left on, the blue glow of the television screen casts the room in shadows. Still buzzed from the party, JJ gratefully accepts the mug that Kie slips into his hand, only to discover it’s filled with tap water.

“Disgusting,” he complains, but nonetheless takes a generous gulp when she sends him a quelling look. Kie's accused him before of subsisting solely off of Mountain Dew, which is an egregious lie—he's also quite partial to Dr Pepper.

The steady narration is soothing and the pair sits in silence for a while, but JJ is incapable of staying still for too long. Soon he’s up and digging through John B’s kitchen cabinets, pulling out boxed mac ‘n’ cheese and banging together pots and pans. He’s in the middle of pouring the noodles into boiling salted water when Kiara appears at his elbow.

“JJ, what are you doing?”

Startled, he nearly overturns the saucepan. “Jesus Christ, a bit of a warning next time.”

Kiara picks up the discarded box on the cluttered countertop, reading the nutritional warning intently. “This is all chemicals,” she grimaces.

“Those chemicals taste delicious,” JJ retorts with his head inside the fridge, trying to figure out whether John B owns either milk or butter. He finds a half-empty container of coffee creamer. “Hey, do you know if this counts as milk?”

“Give me that.” Pushing him aside, Kiara takes over the rest.

JJ likes watching her cook, and not in a weird ‘women belong in the kitchen’ type of way. There’s just a steady confidence to Kiara when she cooks, probably earned after years of working at The Wreck. Some sort of magical calculus seems to happen as she adds dashes of this and splashes of that, stirring and tasting and sniffing as she goes. Occasionally she brings the wooden spoon up to JJ’s mouth, and he savors something creamy, peppery, and cheesy.

It’s still boxed mac ‘n’ cheese when she serves it in chipped bowls, but JJ is convinced this is the best mac ‘n’ cheese he’s ever had.

“That shit was delicious,” he praises after his final big spoonful, not caring that he’s scalded the roof of his mouth. “My compliments to the chef.”

Pleased, Kiara shoots him a small smile. Her own dish is still untouched, even though JJ notices she’ll stir the pasta around occasionally. Catching his curious gaze, Kie shrugs, “I’m not that hungry.”

JJ stares at her in disbelief. “Dude, we had lunch at like, four.”

She frowns, tone defensive, “I had snacks in my bag.”

“You had an apple,” JJ reminds her. “Which I ate.”

For a second, Kie looks like she’s about to argue. There’s tension in her shoulders and she’s tightened her jaw, glaring at him. But it’s only for a moment, and then she exhales. “Fine, whatever.”

Instead of eating in the kitchen, they go back to the darkness of the living room to finish the documentary. She sits cross-legged this time, bowl in her lap, while JJ is the one to prop his feet up. This part of the narration he knows by heart, he and John B have watched it so many times with Big John, and JJ entertains Kiara by doing it in fantastically bad accents. It’s probably not as funny as they think—they had four shots of Malibu rum after all—but she snorts loudly when he does his best Crocodile Hunter impression.

“That was so bad,” she giggles, “You sounded Russian.”

“You know who’s terrible at accents?”

“Pope?”

“Nah, John B,” and JJ reveals, “We dared him to try one on a Touron last year. She told him it sounded like he was choking on balls.”

Kie throws her head back, laughing. “Did it work?” she snickers.

“Yeah, our boy fucking got a date,” JJ grins proudly. “It was a goddamned Christmas miracle.”

She rolls her eyes, but her rueful smile is fond. Her gaze lands on the bedroom door they’d left cracked open, through which they can see a messy head of curls snoring quietly over the edge of the mattress.

“How bad was it?” she asks, breaking the thoughtful silence. “You know, when they told him Big John was gone.”

Even out of John B’s earshot, they can’t bring themselves to use the term ‘dead’.

JJ sighs, casting his memory back to those stormy days. “Pretty bad. Couldn’t believe it, none of us could. The Coast Guard stopped looking pretty quick, those fucking bastards,” he ran a frustrated hand roughly through his hair. “People don’t just vanish into thin air.”

Silent, Kiara gnaws on her lower lip. “Do you ever think… you know… that maybe he just left? You know, like John B’s mom?”

That real piece of work hadn’t even bothered to show up, JJ remembers. Just a long-distance call, crackly and hollow, to say that John B could come visit her whenever in Colorado or New Mexico or wherever she was.

“No,” the answer is flat and non-negotiable. “Big John wouldn’t do that.”

“How do you know that?” Kiara questions, and lists with her fingers, “He left suddenly, he took the rent money, and he didn’t even say when he was coming back.”

“Big John’s not like that,” JJ denies point-blank, and for some reason it really fucking matters to him that Kie understand. “He’s not that type of guy, okay? Like, yeah, he might not deserve a World’s Best Dad mug, but he’s not a fucking asshole—he wouldn’t just _leave.”_

And JJ doesn’t know exactly what it is.

Maybe it’s sitting on the worn leather couch, the one where Big John let him sleep on nights JJ couldn’t risk going home. Maybe it’s the documentary, the same gentle narration he’s been listening to since the third grade (“Look at that boys, isn’t she a beaut?” Big John would say, staring longingly at the decomposing shipwreck). Maybe it’s the first-aid kit, always stocked and ready on the kitchen countertop since Big John saw him limp up the porch stairs.

It could be all those things, or it could be the fact that the only paternal figure JJ’s ever known—no matter how absent, no matter how flaky—is most likely dead, sitting drowned at the bottom of the ocean.

Whatever it is, his ribcage contracts and JJ _can’t fucking breathe._

He’s gone.

Big John’s actually fucking gone.

Even if no one has the balls to admit it, JJ knows, he can feel it. The same way he felt his mom slip through his fingers. There one day, gone the next. Isn’t that how death works?

“JJ?” Kiara’s voice sounds distant, even though he can feel her small hand on his shoulder, her fingertips tilting his head to face her. “JJ, it’s okay.”

He closes his eyes, inhales and exhales.

It takes a few tries, but he resurfaces.

The grief is still there, potent in his chest. Acknowledged yet latent. Compartmentalized with every other shitty aspect of his life. Kiara’s right, it is okay—this kind of shit happens. It might suck and hurt like a bitch, but it happens. Nothing to go to pieces over.

“I’m fine,” he says when there’s enough air in his lungs.

“No, you’re not,” she counters, concern bright in her eyes. Placing both hands on his shoulders, Kie says, “It’s okay to not be okay. You have a right to grieve too.”

JJ rubs his face with his hands, because he doesn’t think he wants Kiara to see him cry. “Stop it, Kie.”

Because Kiara rarely does as she’s told, she wraps strong arms around him and pulls him tight into a hug. JJ buries his face into her hair, pretending he’s not shedding salty tears into her curls. The scent of her conditioner is familiar, the feel of her embrace—squeezing hard like she’s trying to put him back together from the outside—is comforting. The rise and fall of her chest against his, back-and-forth like the tide, reminds him to breathe.

They stay like that for a long time.

Credits start rolling, the screen fades to black.

Slowly, they move apart, untangling their limbs and their breath, each returning to their own body. “It’ll be alright,” she whispers as she releases him, moving to press a kiss against his cheek.

Except, that’s not exactly where her lips land.

Instead, they’re at the corner of his mouth, soft and warm, so close that if he tilted his head they’d be kissing. Her arms are still wound loosely around him and JJ wonders, in the part of his head that isn’t losing its shit, if she can feel how ridiculously his heart is thumping in his chest.

 _This isn’t a good idea,_ says the part of him who values the Pogues above everything else. This voice is his north star, his guiding light. When in doubt, this is the maxim JJ turns to.

 _This is the best thing that’s ever happened to you,_ says another part of him. Softer, straining to be heard. This is the voice that tells him he’s worthy of love and affection whenever Luke Maybank is beating the shit out of his son. This is the voice that JJ rarely listens to.

No matter what his battling conscience dictates or wants, JJ doesn’t move. He doesn’t push any boundaries he’s not welcome to push. He just waits. Listens.

There’s a second, the longest second of JJ’s life, where he can almost hear Kiara deliberating in her head. And then, featherlight pressure against his mouth, fingertips brushing against the back of his t-shirt. Something warm unfurls in his chest, like golden dawn spreading atop the water, and JJ slants his mouth over hers, and then—

_“Coming soon to a theater near you.”_

The announcement blares from the television set, so loud as to be unholy, and the two teenagers spring apart. The room is awash in blue light and JJ squints at the brightness to see an advert for a fifteen-year-old movie flicker onscreen.

Deliberately, Kiara isn’t looking at him.

In that moment, it occurs to JJ that there’s a decision to be made, one that could make or break his friendship with Kie. Either he shows his cards now and risks losing it all, or, potentially, he folds and removes himself from the pot. Head cleared from the fog of whatever just happened between them, JJ listens to the voice that has never failed him. His moral compass, or whatever comes closest.

Springing upright, he stretches and casually drawls, “So, are you all done taking advantage of my body during my hour of need?”

There’s a little more bite to his words than he intends, but it’s mostly good-humored. Teasing, even friendly.

Startled, Kie looks up at him, mouth open and brow furrowed. It takes a second for her to recognize what he’s offering, but realization soon flashes in her eyes, followed by open gratitude.

The sight makes his stomach drop, a confirmation of something he’d long suspected, but at least now JJ knows he’s made the right choice.

“Excuse me? I believe you kissed me,” Kiara scorns, barely concealing a smile.

JJ clutches his chest and widens his blue eyes. “I’ll have you know I was _distressed.”_

Having gathered her bearings, she scoffs loudly and rises as well, beginning to pick up the dirty dishes and cups discarded around the room. There’s one particular plate sitting out by the entrance that she refuses to touch, where Pope is testing the decomposition rate of something now unrecognizable.

“Keep those lips to yourself, Maybank,” she retorts over her shoulder. “I don’t know where they’ve been.”

The words don’t sting, not really—they’re meant to be tongue-in-cheek, he can tell. But JJ knows what they think of him. And he’s not ashamed, he’s not.

So just to prove to himself that he can, that whatever just happened won’t change things between them, JJ picks her up by the waist, pressing slobbery, wet kisses on her cheek and forehead.

“Ugh, stop, JJ, that’s disgusting!” Kie protests, squirming violently in his grip, pushing him away with her arms and elbows.

When he’s put her down, she doesn’t hesitate to retaliate, grabbing a cushion and thwacking him on the side. It hurts, but JJ can’t tell if it’s the usual rib pain or the stitch in his side from laughing too hard.

“That was payback,” he snickers, clutching at his ribcage.

“For what?” she demands, using a kitchen towel to wipe off his saliva.

“For almost ravishing me in front of my fair lady,” JJ says obviously, gesturing in the direction of John B’s bedroom door. As if agreeing, the master of the house let out a particularly loud, choked sort of snuffling sound in his sleep.

Kiara snorts derisively, “There’s nothing fair about him.”

A pause—one where Kiara catches sight of JJ’s gleeful expression and groans—right before he crows, “ _That’s what she said!”_

“I walked right into that, didn’t I?”

* * *

JJ doesn’t believe in regrets.

Spending life constantly looking in the rearview mirror is how things tend to go to shit. That’s not him. He’s the type of person who’s constantly moving forward, itching to go places and do things. Sure, he’s still just ‘the Maybank kid’—he might never make it out of the Outer Banks, he might never get to escape his dad. Or worse, he might live up to what everybody else seems to expect of Luke’s son. But those are darker thoughts for darker days, the kind of thoughts JJ is constantly outrunning.

One thing he does know for certain: the Pogues are his life. JJ believes it with a conviction that has never been shaken, he knows it like he knows that azure skies always follow powerful storms.

It’s the reason why he takes the fall for Pope when the deputy sheriff comes with an arrest warrant to Heyward’s shop. JJ knows his future’s expendable, but Pope’s is not.

It’s the reason why he’s willing to follow John B on an insane hunt for stolen treasure. Yes, he cares about the money, he needs the money; but more than that, he needs John B to _stay alive._ And when everything falls apart, JJ steals the Phantom against his better judgment. He offers his best friend an escape plan, the same escape plan JJ’s been dreaming of his whole life.

It’s also the reason why, when Kiara presses a kiss to John B’s cheek and says, _“Be careful,”_ (and says it like she means something else), JJ can’t find it in himself to hold a grudge.

_“Of course, I’m hitting on her. She’s a super-hot, rich, hippie chick slumming with us. Why? I can't figure it out either. But who cares, bro? I know that door’s closed because I’ve tried it.”_

They’re back to normal, him and her. They still flirt outrageously, they still grind together at parties, and they definitely bicker loudly and often. On nights when the beer makes her sleepy, she leans her head against his shoulder; on days when the world feels heavier, he’ll slump into her side, let her comb fingers through his hair. The blue-and-white friendship bracelet is always tied fast around his wrist, stacked along with all the others he’s received over the years.

He’d be a liar if he said that there aren’t times when he wonders, times when he _wants._ When he catches her eye and his stomach clenches, when he glimpses her smile and his chest aches. These moments exist, because JJ isn’t a fucking saint.

But then JJ remembers the path he’s chosen. How he’d folded his cards, walked away from the table, and she had been _grateful._

This is Kie, he reminds himself, and fucking this up has consequences. Yes, she’s a super-hot Kook chick who’s chosen them for reasons no one can understand. But she’s also their emotional rock. The girl who extended forgiveness when JJ didn’t expect it, the same girl who asked for forgiveness without demanding anything in return.

So yeah, maybe he lets himself wonder sometimes. It’s rare and self-indulgent, but it doesn’t make a difference, right?

After all, there’s no point in knocking on doors that lead nowhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that concludes JJ's perspective for now. I'll miss this angsty little nugget. Two final notes before I wrap this up:
> 
> (1) Queen Anne's Academy is a fictional school - I just refuse to believe Kiara's fancy school is actually called Kook Academy. Just no. (Also Queen Anne's Revenge is the name of Blackbeard's ship, which he ran aground in the Inner Banks of North Carolina, during the 1700s).
> 
> (2) My personal headcanon is that Caroline Maybank's sweet potato pie recipe is the one she saw made at The Wreck - the same recipe Kiara is taught by her grandmother. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone for your feedback and kudos, and just thank you to anyone who's taken the time to read this. This was such a pleasure to write and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have.
> 
> -
> 
> Edit: I forgot to put this in the notes, but I'd like to state that the idea of Kie having some sort of eating disorder (or anxiety about food) is not mine. I'm not quite sure where it originated since it's bled into fanon, but the first fic I ever read it in was round the world by RaeOfFrickingSunshine. My apologies!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, if you've made it this far.
> 
> I've promised myself I'll get back to writing and editing my main fics soon (as well as my thesis, but who really cares about that?). However, it's been fun writing from JJ's perspective, maybe one day we'll get Kiara's. Or maybe, hopefully, we'll get the well thought out, slow-as-molasses slow burn that JJ and Kiara deserve.


End file.
